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A Seahorse Toy

Today, my youngest, my 7-year old son Renz asked me to draw a seahorse for him. This was late in the afternoon when I spent the whole day with him. The girls were all in school and DH was still accompanying Che in UP Manila. Tita Gay was in La Union. So it was just me and him.

In the morning, I asked Renz if he wanted to go to our neighbor SM mall. It was too noisy outside as Meralco was cutting down trees with a chainsaw. Besides, I had to get our car registration stickers from nearby Land Transportation Office or LTO (walking distance). And so we went to LTO and then to SM. He was quite happy all throughout.
At SM Ace Hardware, he was asking about all the tools on the shelves we passed by. Renz hardly goes with me at Ace Hardware in malls and this time he had so many questions. Of course, I was just too happy to answer each and every one of them. I constantly reminded him that if you know how to do the job AND know the proper tools to use, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!

But back to the seahorse.

In the afternoon, Renz was following me around the house. Since I was out gardening, he brought out a piece of carton and a marker and asked that I draw for him a seahorse. I didn't know what he was up to, but I just had a hunch that he'd want a cutout of the drawing - and that's why he brought out a carton. It was a long time since I drew anything especially that of animals.

And so I recalled hard the images I had of seahorses when we visited the Manila Ocean Park. After cutting it and placing it on top of a brown Anahaw fan, here's the best that I could muster.

To say that little Renz was ecstatic and appreciative with my poor rendition of a seahorse would be an understatement. For the entire evening, he was animated in playing with it and a crab decor that DH bought from Divisoria.

He was probably immersed in a pretend Spongebob Squarepants episode while he conjured dialogues and fight scenes for the seahorse and crab. Seeing him playing excitedly while oblivious of everyone around reminded me of myself when I was around that age. I would play with common household items like ballpens and staplers visualizing them as fight characters.

I suppose I didn't need expensive toys to amuse myself way back then - just a big imagination.